Friday, October 30, 2026

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Israelis went to the polls on Tuesday and turned out in force. Some 77.7% of eligible voters cast ballots, the highest turnout since 1999, a clear sign of how determined Israelis were to have their voices heard after October 7 and the long war that followed. 

With most of the ballots counted at the time of writing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party leads with 28 seats, a surprise after most polls had Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party in front. Yashar, barely a year old, follows with 21. Neither is close to the 61-seat majority needed to govern.  

Attention has turned to the blocs. Netanyahu’s camp of Likud and its religious and right-wing partners holds 56 seats, five short of a majority. Eisenkot’s camp holds 48: Yashar, Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad party, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu and the Democrats. 

The Arab parties had their strongest showing ever, with the Joint List at 12 seats and Ra’am at 4. Eisenkot cannot reach a majority without those 16 seats, but his conditions for any partner, including recognizing Israel as a Jewish state and Hamas as a terror organization that must be dismantled, are terms that most Arab lawmakers are unlikely to accept. Netanyahu, meanwhile, would need to win over a party from the other camp, whose leaders all campaigned on replacing him. 

Final results are due next week. President Isaac Herzog will then consult with each party and invite the candidate with the best chance to try to form a coalition. Negotiations could take weeks and, if there is a stalemate, could even end in another election.

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Hamas reportedly sent Israel an unusually blunt warning earlier this month. According to a memo excerpt aired by Israel’s Channel 13, senior Hamas officials asked the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Ramiz Alakbarov, to tell Israel that the group is ready to carry out another attack like October 7 in Israel, in Judea and Samaria, or abroad. They cited Israeli troops advancing past Gaza’s ceasefire line and the Palestinian Authority’s postponement of its legislative elections. Israeli security officials are assessing whether such an attack is feasible. Israel’s security cabinet also was reportedly briefed that Hamas has been stockpiling weapons and moving them into civilian areas. 

To the north, Lebanese security sources told Reuters that Hezbollah has used a lull in fighting since June to rearm. According to these sources, it has received tens of millions of dollars in new funding from Iran and is focusing on explosives and drones that could target Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah disputed part of the report. 

Within Judea and Samaria, security forces arrested some 40 suspects in operations at more than 400 locations after last week’s deadly attack near Hebron. Paratroopers also detained five Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad affiliates in Qabatiya in northern Samaria. Separately, police seized hunting rifles, ammunition and IDF uniforms in Bethlehem and the Hebron area. 

At sea, Israel’s navy held a joint drill with Greece in the Mediterranean last week, practicing how to identify and sink hostile vessels. Navy commander Vice Adm. Eyal Harel called the partnership with Greece “a significant force multiplier.” 

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Last Friday, two Palestinian terrorists drove up to a temporary Israel Defense Forces (IDF) checkpoint at the Yehuda Junction near Hebron in Judea and opened fire on the soldiers on duty. Two soldiers from the Home Front Command’s Ari Battalion were killed in a gun battle that lasted more than two minutes: Staff Sgt. Ron Yonatan Roytman, 23, a squad commander; and Sgt. Yuval Shai Svilem, 20. Three other soldiers were wounded. 

According to the IDF, the gunmen meant to reach a nearby highway and attack Israeli civilians; the large amount of ammunition later found in their car points to a much bigger planned attack. Hamas later claimed responsibility. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir credited the soldiers’ quick response with preventing far greater harm. 

Hundreds of mourners attended Svilem’s funeral on Sunday. Roytman was laid to rest earlier that day. Yuval’s company commander said the young soldier returned fire and “fell in heroic combat.” His father, Amnon, spoke of the dreams his son would never get to live out. He noted that Yuval died during the week of Lech Lecha (“Go forth”), the weekly Torah (Gen.­–Deut.) reading about God calling Abraham, and said his son had reached “the very highest heights.” 

Since the attack, troops have searched about 500 homes and other sites, mainly around Hebron. Near one terrorist’s home, they found a hidden shaft about 15 meters (49 ft.) deep, which is a rare discovery in Judea and Samaria.

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On Tuesday, a 20-year-old Israeli woman was driving on Route 60 near Rehelim, a Jewish community in Samaria, when Palestinian terrorists threw rocks at her car. One stone broke through her windshield and hit her in the face. Hatzalah Judea and Samaria, a volunteer rescue organization, said that “miraculously, she did not lose control of the vehicle.” Paramedics from Magen David Adom (Israel’s ambulance service) treated her and took her to Rabin Medical Center’s Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikvah with light injuries. The rescue organization called the attack attempted murder. For the many residents who travel these roads every day to reach work, school and family, Tuesday’s attack is a sobering reminder of how quickly an ordinary drive can turn dangerous. 

While Israelis are still carrying the grief of October 7, 2023, many are finding meaningful ways to honor those who were lost. An October 22 Israel Hayom feature profiles clinical psychologist Lihie Gilhar, founder of the Bring Them Light project, as one who has been working with grieving families to create more than 334 tribute videos that honor the lives they led. Her new initiative, Carry Them Forward, invites schools, communities and Jewish organizations, some as far away as Peru, to each take up one person’s story and honor that individual through art, volunteering and acts of kindness. “Memory is an act of love,” Gilhar said.

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A UN panel, the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, released a new report Monday accusing Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity and of committing genocide in Gaza. According to JNS, the report refers to Hamas just twice and assigns it no blame for the October 7 attacks. Israel’s mission in Geneva said the report spreads falsehoods to portray Israel’s very existence as criminal, and Israeli Ambassador Daniel Meron urged the international community to demand the commission’s dissolution. 

Two recent elections saw setbacks for Israel. In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won reelection over Flávio Bolsonaro, who had promised to restore ties with Israel and move Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem. The two countries currently have no ambassadors in each other’s capitals. In Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat to a student-led movement. Serbia supplied Israel with weapons during the war and in September inaugurated a factory to assemble Israeli-made drones with Elbit Systems. The new leadership has not yet taken a clear position, Ynet reported. 

Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Zvi Vapni, told JNS that relations with the Dutch government are probably the worst they have ever been. He cited the new Dutch ban on products from Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights, which he called draconian for its prison terms of up to six years for travelers, and a rise in antisemitic incidents, including an explosive device at a Jewish school in Amsterdam and an arson attack on a Rotterdam synagogue.

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In Berlin, Germany, police are investigating a suspected antisemitic assault on a 60-year-old Jewish man in a park on Saturday. According to police, an unidentified man who offered him a beer turned hostile on learning that he was Jewish, cursing at him, hurling a beer can, dousing him with beer and punching him to the ground. The victim suffered minor facial injuries. Berlin’s State Security Division has taken over the case as an aggravated assault with an antisemitic motive. 

In New York, USA, Anna Mochalova, a 32-year-old Brooklyn woman, was arraigned Monday on hate-crime charges over attacks on two visibly Jewish men last week. One man reported being shoved repeatedly from behind and then feeling a sharp sting in his arm. According to the complaint, she told him in Russian that she had a gun and would shoot him. The other victim was stabbed on another street and hospitalized in stable condition. The first man said she questioned another man about whether he was Jewish and apologized when he said he was Muslim.

In the UK, Oscar-winning producer Lucie Kon says the BBC paid her a £400,000 (US $534,000) settlement after she threatened to sue, alleging religious and racial discrimination led to her dismissal. She said that when she called Hamas evil after October 7, a colleague replied that Zionists are too, and that her formal complaint was rejected before she was fired in April. The BBC did not comment on her case but said it does not tolerate antisemitism.

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Support for Israel is reaching far beyond its usual circles. On the third anniversary of October 7, the Christian organization Friends of Zion sponsored a 24-hour global broadcast that, according to founder Mike Evans, reached more than 250 million people in 167 countries. Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Evans said the broadcast reached about 3.8 million people in Syria, 1.2 million in Egypt, 1.1 million in Algeria and more than 8.5 million in Brazil after a public appeal from Senator Flávio Bolsonaro. Nearly 60% of its social media audience was between 25 and 34 years old. Evans cautioned that reaching is not the same as commitment and urged Christians to turn awareness into education and action.

Israel also welcomed new friends at the official level. On Monday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog received the credentials of five new ambassadors to Israel, from Austria, France, Ghana, the Netherlands and Rwanda. Herzog praised Rwanda’s growing cooperation with Israel in innovation, agriculture, development and education and thanked Austria for its commitment to fighting antisemitism and remembering the Holocaust. He told Ghana’s envoy that the two countries could deepen ties in areas including agriculture, technology, health care and water management. With France’s new ambassador, Herzog spoke of overcoming the challenges in relations and building a new path forward.

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